


Speak Softly (lest they hear)

by taran



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Boys Will Be Boys, Dialogue prompts, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Geralt and Jaskier are good fucking friends regardless and that's my hill to die on, M/M, Or romantic, Ranging from silly to dramatic to heartache-y, Shenanigans, but like wholesome, or pre-slash, the relationship can be read as platonic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:29:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taran/pseuds/taran
Summary: A selection of dialogue prompts cross-posted from tumblr.On the docket so far:"Was that supposed to hurt?"; "Lie to me, then."&"You don't see me."
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 120





	1. Hurt / Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you the-griffin-and-the-lost-boy for this first prompt! My first one ever! C:
> 
> Dialogue prompt(s) bolded in the text.

Three months after Jaskier last saw him on the mountain, in an upscale tavern in Novigrad playing for a gathering of minor mages, successful merchants, and actors, Jaskier looks up and sees Geralt standing in the back of the common. He is so startled that he ends up ending his set rather abruptly and stumping down from the little raised stage in order to quickly pack his lute away. If he can just get between the two parties exiled to social exclusion in the back and up the stairs to his room-

“Jaskier.” A hand lands on his shoulder. “You-

Jaskier shrugs the hand off roughly, and his voice is a whip crack even over the din of the common: “No.”

Because of course it’s Geralt, and of course he is standing there looking dumbfounded-- as dumbfounded as he can, at least, when half the muscles in his face seem permanently pressed into his neutral scowl. They slacken now in surprise. Jaskier feels a mean little curl of pleasure to have shifted even those. 

“No,” Geralt repeats, like dragging the word over gravel. Jaskier cannot bear to look at him. He slides the last of the leather ties shut on his lute case and slings it over his back with too much force. It barks off the table behind him with a _twong_. He fights the urge to wince. He is hot across his neck with a familiar anger (which is in no way masking hurt, thank you) and unwilling to withstand a second more of this than humanly possible, and so turns abruptly away.

“That’s right, Geralt. No. Forgotten what it means? I know you’ve heard it enough in your life,” Jaskier says cattily. As he walks away, he throws caustically over his shoulder with a jaunty wave, “but let me introduce you one more time.”

He takes the stairs two at a time, an uphill rock fall of flailing and banging limbs and boots too heavy on the wood so that the whole tavern must hear the racket. No matter how much noise he makes, however, it is not enough to mask the sound of heavier boots following behind him on the stair. Jaskier scowls.

He had locked the door to his room, specifically because he room was nice enough to come with a lock. He had been pleased that his belongings would be safe while he performed. Now, he regrets it immensely. Stubbornly, he yanks the key from the pouch on his belt and struggles to fit it into the door. Struggles, because his hands are trembling. He curses.

He feels Geralt stop just behind him. His presence seems to exude-- something. It sets all the hair on Jaskier’s body standing in emotion so strong he feels it in his fingertips. He doesn’t look. He _refuses_. As if Geralt is not there, he finally gets the key in the door and bursts in, swearing profusely when his boot toe catches on an uneven board and he stumbles. He tosses his lute on the bed. Still ignoring the undeniable presence in his doorway, he begins picking in the hooks down the front of his doublet. One tears loose under his numb fingers. He snarls.

“Jaskier-”

He whirls around.

“Did you not hear me?” His voice cuts through the room like a lobbed spear. “I’m uninterested, thanks very much. Now get out.”

Geralt’s brows snap together in consternation. The look is so familiar, which somehow simply rockets him from angry to furious like nothing else. Three months he’d had to forget, or try. Why did Geralt have to, to _ruin it?_

“You won’t even let me speak?”

“You didn’t let me, before,” Jaskier spits. Geralt-- flinches. The molasses-slow shift of guilt oozes across his stiff features as unwillingly as ever. Even so, its presence is enough to give Jaskier pause, just for a moment. Not too long ago Jaskier would have flogged himself to see that expression, to catch a hint of it. Now it makes him grind his teeth.

“You…” Geralt sighs hard enough his nostrils flare and opens his hands wide. “You’ve always been a better man than me,” he points out as if clawing the words out pains him. Jaskier doesn’t take the olive branch.

“Pretty words for someone who claims not to be a man at all. Are you a man, Geralt?” Geralt’s eyes flash up to meet his, shockingly vulnerable for a split second. A single arrow of shame cuts through the red haze for a moment. Jaskier scowls and thinks, _guess I’m not the better man after all._ He changes course. “What could you possibly want to say to me? You got what you wanted, after all.” He turns away to finish undoing his jacket. It’s easier if he doesn’t have to look at him. To not have to read him as clearly as a friend of decades. His mouth runs away with him. “I’m off your hands. What, have you further complaints you were not able to air? Perhaps some long-carried unhappiness to get off your chest? Because I admit to being wholly uninterested-”

“No,” Geralt interrupts in a tight-strung voice. “I’m not- I didn’t find you to yell at you, Jaskier, what the fuck?” His honest bemusement grates. Jaskier throws his jacket on the bed and shoves his sleeves up to the elbow if only to have something to do with his riotous hands.

“Oh, then we’re breaking with tradition, then,” Jaskier says meanly. He flutters about the room impotently, unable to stand still, unable to look at him. “How quaint. Except, again, not interested so will you please-”

“-I’m trying to,” Geralt cuts himself off with a curse. “I came all this way to talk to you, will you just-”

“-and I’ve said no! Multiple times! You stubborn-”

Geralt bulls across the space so suddenly that Jaskier freezes.

“Will you look at me?” Geralt demands. Jaskier’s head snaps around.

“FINE!” he shouts. It does what he wanted; Geralt jerks back at the volume, eyes flown wide. Jaskier follows him with a single, sharp stab to the chest from one string-hardened finger. “I’m looking at you. Is this what you wanted? Do you see what you came for? Because that’s all that matters, right, is what you want?”

Geralt swells up like a thunderhead in a rush of barely-withheld frustration. He has to visibly quell himself. “I… care. About what you want.” His tone comes out bitten-off at the ends. “It matters. And, I’ll,” he scowls, “I’ll leave if you want. If you’ll just let me-”

“Let you what?” Jaskier snips, just to be an asshole. Geralt breathes in and out one through his teeth and rumbles,

“Apologize.”

Jaskier stares at him hard, with that deep unhappy line between his brows and the ready-to-pop tension of his mouth like an over-tightened lute string. He sees all of it and wishes he couldn’t. Geralt’s jaw is ground so tight Jaskier feel a sympathy pain in his molars. He looks paler than Jaskier remembers, with deeper shadows under his eyes. His hair is the dark grey it goes when it hasn’t been washed in a while. He smells of horse, sweat, road dust, and fire smoke. 

Jaskier tamps down on the sympathy that wells up in his chest like vomit and curls a petty lip.

“I wouldn’t think you’d know how. Do you need pointers?”

Geralt frowns.

“Don’t be childish.”

“Oh,” Jaskier gasps, feeling at once like he had won and yet burning, uncomfortable, unquenchable, out of control, “oh, I’m the childish one? Shall we reflect on your little tantrum, Geralt, some three months past? Side of a mountain, dragon hunt-- ringing a bell?”

“I’m sorry,” Geralt grits out. Jaskier has to fight to keep his face from betraying his surprise. He doesn’t want to be surprised, or to feel anything stirring hopefully in his gut with the words, delivered however begrudgingly. Geralt steps closer so that he is all Jaskier can smell. His eyes catch the lamplight like copper coins. “You didn’t deserve that. I was…” He rakes a cruel hand through his hair, numb to how it yanks his disheveled queue further out of arrangement. It looks as if he has repeated the motion many times before he had arrived. “I was angry and I took it out on you because… because-”

“Because you’re an arse.” Geralt glares, mouth already open to argue. Jaskier raises his voice over him. “Admit it! I was an easy target for you to take out your upset over things ending between you and Yennefer. That’s how it always goes with her! She chews you up and spits you out, only this time it wasn’t temporary. So you took your hurt out on me, your obnoxious, worthless travel companion. Like an arse.” The bitterness curls directly off his tongue. He hopes Geralt can taste it.

“I...” Geralt chews on the words-- like glass, if his expression is anything to go by. “You’re… right about Yennefer. But you, you’re not-” Jaskier is barely listening anymore. He feels righteous and vindictive, like draining an infected wound but it’s not a healing pain at all. He doesn’t realize he is trembling.

“I was an easy target,” he snarls. “Easy to cast aside. Like trash.” Geralt bristles.

“Don’t put words into my mouth,” he barks. Jaskier flares up at him.

“Am I? You threw away over two decades of friendship in a squalling fit! Only, of course,” Jaskier laughs sharply, “of course, we weren’t friends, were we? You couldn’t even stand the word. I’m amazed you made it so many years with my unbearable presence.”

Jaskier had been watching closely: the jumping of the muscle in his jaw, the clench of his fists at his sides. It’s the snapcord tight draw of the tendon in Geralt’s neck that marks the breaking of his composure. 

“Don’t be fucking stupid!” he snaps. His flashes teeth like a feral dog. “Of course we were fucking friends!”

An unholy vindication swells up in him when Geralt makes an aborted move forward as if to shove him.

“No,” Jaskier hisses, and then he is shouting. He can’t stop shouting. He shoves out with both hands. Geralt doesn’t budge and he shoves and shoves and he won’t fucking budge. “I was _your_ friend! Me! For years! But you were never-”

“Never what?” Geralt pushes back. “Never saved your life from jealous husbands, thieves, shapeshifters?” Again. Jaskier staggers back a step. His heart is pounding rage in his throat. “Never saved you from your own stupidity?” 

Jaskier feels as if he’s been slapped.

“Thanks ever so!” he snarks over the pain. “If this is how you apologize-”

“I’M TRYING,” Geralt bellows, spittle flying. His eyes flash the color of gold in the sun. “But gods dammit, Jaskier, you can’t make this easy, can you? Nothing can ever be easy, not with you around to fuck it up.”

Jaskier slaps him.

In the sudden quiet, the sound seems inordinately loud. Three breaths pass with only their heavy breathing and the murmur of voices from below.

Ever so slowly, Geralt turns his head back, eyebrows drawn up into a little fist of hurt, before his forehead smooths. He lifts one eyebrow pointedly and sneers.

**“Was that supposed to hurt?”**

The room seems to drop away. _Right, then._

Which is when Jaskier reels back and punches him in the nose.

*

Afterwards, after Jaskier has bloodied Geralt’s nose and Geralt has broken the bed frame with tossing him back onto it-- after they’ve wrestled like school boys, elbows flying and pinching and slapping and biting and pinning-- after Jaskier had gotten the upper hand for all of a moment with an old move learned with the other noble boys destined for knighthood whereas Jaskier was, apparently, destined to end up on a shitty little paillase in Redania locking a witcher’s elbow behind his back-- -- 

After Geralt has, of course, come out on top and managed to pin Jaskier sweating and swearing and sputtering beneath him-- and after he manages to haltingly, breathlessly, quietly press out his apology to a captive audience-- and after Jaskier finds something inside him breaks open like a dropped wine bottle and, pinned, he has no choice but the let the ugly hurt and broken shards puke out--

Afterwards, they lay huffing and panting into silence. Geralt’s shoulder and elbow press into his own, exuding heat like a banked fire. His hair tickles Jaskier’s ear on that side. His chest rumbles on a hum, and it could be indistinguishable from any other such room. Any other such bed and night. If he closes his eyes and pretends that his chest has not been wrenched open, Jaskier can almost pretend. They had never parted and travel on instead. Hunts, and vodka passed beside the fire, shared strange and lonely sights in the wilderness, and two friends.

Jaskier swallows.

“Don’t take this to mean you’re forgiven.”

“Hm.”

Jaskier scratches an itch, squirms.

“You look like shit. Have you been surviving without me?”

Geralt chuckles a dry sound like something catching fire.

“In a sense.” A pause stretches. “How have you been?” He clears his throat. “Without me?”

Jaskier stares at the far wall. This pause, by contrast, stretches more languidly than a stray cat on a fence. Whip-hard and starved.

“...I don’t want,” Jaskier says quietly, “to talk about how I’ve been, Geralt. I don’t want to open up to you. I don’t want to bear my soul, and I don’t want to be honest. Even if we’re…” Better. Closer to alright. “...It’s too soon.”

“Hm,” Geralt hums just as quietly. Jaskier hears the shift of fabric. When he turns his head, he finds cat eyes staring back at him from a bare foot away. He swallows-- chest open, chest closed tight, chest flayed. Geralt presses his lips together and bumps their shoulders. **“Lie to me, then.”**

Jaskier watches, just perceptible, as the corner of Geralt’s mouth curls uncertainly up. He breathes. Chest open, chest closed tight, chest flayed. 

He smiles.

“I’ve been fantastic. Smashing. All gay parties and glowing candlelit nights.”

If his voice chokes and cracks on the lie and his smile wobbles, Geralt does him the rare kindness of not noticing. Instead, he turns onto his side and curls up delicately, so carefully, until his forehead is just pressed to Jaskier’s shoulder through the thin material of his shirt. His breath rushes out, fluttering the sleeve.

“...Me, too.”

Jaskier swallows.

His chest is still an open wound. But he thinks he feels it healing.


	2. See

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe if Geralt puts his eyes down into his hand and pretends this isn't happening, it will just... go away.
> 
> (Except he knows Jaskier better than to ever hope for something so far-fetched as him knowing when to _stop_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you partyhardwoohoo on tumblr for this prompt! It was too much fun to write C:

**“You don’t see me,”** Jaskier pants from where he has scrambled behind Geralt's chair. 

And, really, of all the ways Geralt had foreseen this night turning out, this was not outside the realm of possibility. Rather than say anything, Geralt picks up his goblet and, sighing heavily, drains it.

He hadn’t known Jaskier would be at this celebration. Scratching that, he hadn’t even known Jaskier was in this kingdom. Last they had parted in some muddy marsh in Redania, Jaskier had been awaited in Cidaris to perform in some political wedding between two major noble houses. At the time, the last glimpse Geralt had caught of him had been: huddled in his cloak, made small from the last chill day of spring; caked in mud up to his knee-high boots, yet rosy cheeked and grinning with victory as he waved the witcher on with the parting farewell, “‘Til summer, then! I’ll just catch on with that caravan coming over the horizon. Looks like they’re very well to do– exactly the type to enjoy a traveling bard’s charm and warmth on such a drab trek, don’t you think?” And then, when Geralt was nearly out of (human) earshot, he had called, “Don’t let anything get its claws into you whilst I’m not there, Wolf!”

In a month and a half, Jaskier seems to have come into some good fortune (the fine, soft linen of his flatteringly draped trousers, the kidskin of his soft boots) only to immediately lose it again. The last bit, of course, is only supposition. Based on the fact that he crouches behind Geralt’s seat, sleeveless tunic completely unbuttoned over his airy organza chemise where it gapes open at the collar. 

Geralt had caught only a glance of his flushed face, but he knows what his friend looks like when he’s been at the drink. He also knows from their time together exactly how recent debauchery shows on his skin and neck. He doesn’t need to turn and look to see it for himself. He can smell it. Instead, he reaches for the pitcher of wine.

“Jaskier,” he sighs. It is all he says.

Jaskier, of course, takes immediate offense.

“I haven’t done anything wrong!” he hisses from the shadows. Geralt hums, refilling his goblet. The wine isn’t bad– not to a witcher used to the road.

“Or anyone?” he rumbles. Jaskier scoffs behind his ear. The main doors open; a harried guard and a fluttering servant stride up the middle of the hall between the two tables, headed for their host.

“Is there no respect for the choices of a grown man or woman in this backward kingdom?” he complains. “You’d think I’d killed someone by the way they carry on.”

“Jaskier,” he growls. Jaskier huffs an overblown sigh. 

“How am I to know who is engaged and who is not if they won’t tell me? Really, Geralt.”

The seneschal at Geralt’s elbow sends him a condoling look and passes the bread. Geralt happily takes another roll with thanks. This baron keeps the best baker in the state, and he is never one to turn away such a luxury. The road has only ever lined his gut with venison and crispbread, and recently the road has been long and his purse light. Even so, he is even more thankful that his other neighbor has yet to take any notice of their whispered conversation.

A hand snakes into view for just a moment. Petulantly, Geralt jerks the roll away and nudges it back with his elbow.

“And besides,” Jaskier continues, apparently unbothered by the fracas growing in volume at the front of the hall. He is lucky indeed that Geralt had been positioned in somewhat obscurity to the back of the hall. He doubts he would have been able to hide half as effectively where they any nearer to the windows and candles closer to the nobility. “It’s not a love match. No one has exchanged anything like a vow or even some much as a half-hearted promise at this point.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt scolds. Fingers pinch his side.

“Not a word.”

“I thought traveling bards were meant to keep up on such news,” Geralt says into his food, which is many words. Jaskier exacts revenge by stealing the pickled cucumber from his plate. His hand retreats back behind his seat.

“News, yes,” Jaskier huffs. “Gossip, as well. But only a fool _believes_ it.”

“ _I_ believe,” Geralt murmurs, “that you are about to face a cadre of very unhappy kinsmen if you continue to linger here.” Jaskier makes an agreeing sort of noise as he crunches his stolen goods. “Why haven’t you ridden for the border yet? Or left the castle, even, you dolt.”

“Lost my horse in a bet,” Jaskier grouses. Geralt snorts and pretends it was to spit into his napkin when it draws attention. The woman across from him glares her disapproval briefly. “Not a word, I said!” Jaskier hisses. “I was actually quite attached to- ah–”

“Marigold,” Geralt supplies. 

“-yes, Marigold.”

“Triss would curse you if she knew.”

Jaskier sniffs. “It was a tribute, meant only in the highest respect.”

“Was it respect when you bet her on-”

“-a case of Toussaint red.”

“-on a case of wine?”

“Let me take Roach,” Jaskier says rather than answer. Teeth-deep in a bite of roast lamb, Geralt frowns. 

“No.”

“Oh, come on, please,” Jaskier wheedles. For a man hiding from very unhappy kinsmen to his latest lover, he is quite chatty. Geralt remembers his flushed cheeks and reconsiders, ah, yes. Must have been wine. I thought he lost the bet? “It will just be until I’m outside the kingdom borders. I’ll take the highway and stop in the first clearing so you’ll know exactly where to find me. I’ll even oil your tack as compensation for what would otherwise be an unselfish show of friendship and trust.”

“No.”

“Geralt,” he begins. Geralt doesn’t get to hear what other argument he has up his sleeve, however. The seneschal picking at his salad on Geralt’s left clears his throat delicately. 

Immediately, he realizes what is wrong: the noise from the front of the hall has ceased. From the corner of his eye, he becomes aware of a half dozen armed guards led by two men he recognizes at the baron’s oldest sons striding down the length of the hall. 

Jaskier must notice, too. Rather than turn tail and make for the door– or even, knowing him as Geralt does, standing to talk his way out of whatever trouble he has drawn– rather than doing either of those, he crouches further, hisses at Geralt, “Move your thigh,” and with a shove to his side wriggles under the table. 

“Don’t!” Geralt whispers, too late.

It is a tight squeeze. The table is long but not terribly wide, and seated on both sides with every member of the household staff. Geralt hears Jaskier mutter a curse to himself and nearly jumps when two hands land on his thighs, pressing them apart to make room for Jaskier to squeeze between. The seneschal clears his throat once more, radiating judgement. Geralt resists the urge to clamp a hand over his eyes, barely. As if it would make the current situation disappear. 

The company of guards and sons moves past and out of the hall. 

“Don’t get excited,” Jaskier whispers, and pats him far enough up his leg that Geralt does jump. Jaskier chuckles. “Merciful goddess, that was close.”

“And what,” Geralt grinds out, “do you plan to do down there?”

The scandalized seneschal coughs into his fist. Roughly, Geralt grabs the pitcher of wine nearly out of the questing hand of the Housekeeper across of him and slams it down at the seneschal’s elbow. The seneschal, steadfastly ignoring him as he unashamedly eavesdrops, jumps like a man prodded.

“For your throat,” Geralt glowers. 

It is, admittedly, an effective glower. He watches just long enough to see the pale-faced man nod quickly and fumbling pour himself a glass that goes more on his plate than in his cup, then returns to his predicament. 

“Well, funny you should ask,” Jaskier hums, unawares, “because, you see, um, I haven’t quite, well, planned past this point-” 

Geralt really does lower his eyes into his hand. All he can do is prop that elbow on the table and hope he merely looks tired to any who should glance his way. Tired, and not like he is having a conversation with the man crouched between his legs.

“Jaskier,” Geralt growls at his lap as quietly as he can. “If you pull me into this fucking farce you’ve orchestrated before I’ve even been fucking paid for this job that took me two fucking weeks-”

“I haven’t!” Jaskier whispers back fiercely.

Geralt pins him with a look. “If it looks like they are going to find you here, I will drag you out from under there, march you to the Baron’s table, and offer to thrash your bare arse like a snot-nosed brat myself. I’ll do it in front of the whole fucking court if it means I will still get paid. Do you understand me?”

Wide eyed, Jaskier opens his mouth to protest. They are interrupted by one of the sons returning. Geralt doesn’t even hear him come up, so focused is he, until the man speaks.

“Sir Witcher?”

Jaskier shifts against his legs. Almost before he is aware of it, Geralt buries his hand in his hair and makes a hard fist. Jaskier, mid way to crawling– back out, or away– freezes. Casually, Geralt turns to face the second oldest son whilst his free hand reaches for his goblet with not a care in the world.

“Trouble, my lord?” He grunts, and takes a sip of wine. Jaskier’s boots shuffle under the table. Geralt tightens his hold and pins him to his leg. Jaskier stills, breathing sharply against his thigh where his cheek is pressed.

The son smiles grimly. “Purely human in nature, serah. Please don’t let me interrupt your dinner beyond the necessary.” 

A distracting hand wraps around his ankle. Geralt distinctly does not twitch.

“My thanks,” Geralt says dryly.

“My father has asked that I offer you room for the night, should you require.”

“Your father is uncommonly generous to offer,” Geralt notes. He can feel Jaskier’s rabbiting heartbeat thrumming where his knee has pressed into his chest. “No, I require nothing but the agreed upon price. I have a room booked at the inn for another night yet.”

The lordling smiles. “Very well. I’m afraid I can’t see you to our steward myself at the moment. But I will have my father informed to expect you in the antechamber after the meal has ended. He will see to your payment.”

It is unspeakably rude that he has not risen, Geralt knows. He also knows that he can get away with it. Witchers have always held a strange position in society. Outside of its rules and structures. It is a pleasant surprise, however, when rather than being offended as is his born right, the young lord merely offers his hand like a lowbornsman and with a short farewell leaves to catch up with his guard.

Under the table, Jaskier pants out a smothered insult against his trouser leg. Geralt smirks meanly and holds him struggling there just long enough to make his point. It’s when Jaskier’s hands start fumbling up his legs looking for weaknesses and one finds the back of a knee that he lets go and goes back to his meal. Jaskier pinches him anyway and tells him exactly what he thinks.

“Neither of us know my father, and such a configuration seems unlikely,” Geralt replies mildly.

“Even more likely to be true, then,” Jaskier shoots back, craning his head as if to peer around Geralt’s chair for any other visitors.

From this angle, Geralt can see what he hadn’t before. A handful of deep maroon suck-marks spot the side of his neck and just behind the hinge of his jaw. His lips are still red from kissing whatever noble he should not have. (Judging by the stubble burn on his neck, it was the future husband.) He smells like wine, and sex, and cedar and bergamot perfume. His hair is mussed where Geralt had grabbed him. He doesn’t know what it had looked like before. He knows what it looks like now, however.

Suddenly, supremely aware of what the assumption will be if they are discovered, Geralt straightens. A passing servant pauses, takes up an empty plate to his left, and moves on without noticing anything amiss. Jaskier’s sigh of relief skitters hot and far too close across leather. It raises all the hair along Geralt’s arms. He freezes.

“In my belt purse,” he blurts. Blue eyes flash up at him. He tries to keep his face still and fails. He lifts his cup to hide it. “I still have a room at the local inn for the next two nights. Take the key from my purse and go there. And don’t get caught, or I’ll say you stole it.”

“And Roach?”

Geralt gives him a flat look. “Leaving on horseback is conspicuous. Or have you forgotten you’re sneaking out a fugitive?”

Jaskier pouts. “Point made,” he says, before ducking back enough to give himself room to work. Geralt tears his eyes away to look about the room nonchalantly. It is only the wood of the table creaking under his grip that makes him realize how tense he has become. Breathing in and out deeply, he forces himself to relax. 

Fingers grope at his belt for an excruciatingly long moment. Geralt takes up his forgotten roll and rips a bite off with perhaps too much gusto. 

“Got it,” Jaskier whispers. He leans forward just enough to wink up at Geralt one last time, grinning impishly. “Well, this has certainly been one of the more interesting nights I’ve spent on my knees-”

_“Leave,”_ Geralt groans, and really does curl a defeated hand over his eyes as he feels Jaskier wriggle out from under the table. He doesn’t even watch him go. 

Only after he is sure he’s gone does Geralt slide a coin to the seneschal.

“This stays between us.”


End file.
